Business Analyst Articles & Systems Analysis Articles

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» FEATURED: Ambiguity, Uncertainty or Both?

(1953 Views) (7 Comments)

We have always been fascinated by the exceptional business analysts who can create order out of total chaos. The ones who can ask those great questions, who can figure out what’s important and what’s less so, who can synthesize lots of information, put it all into their magic hat and come out with requirements that make sense to all the stakeholder...

» FEATURED: How Detailed Should Requirements Be? - Part 1

(6300 Views) (15 Comments)

How Detailed Should Requirements Be? - Part 1

Recently I was chatting at a wine tasting event with a couple of lawyers, who I had just met. One was surprisingly inquisitive about my work in the software requirements arena. Apparently she was working on case involving software at that very time. At one point she asked me, “How do you know how detailed to make the requirements?”

» FEATURED: How to Effectively Engage Requirement Contributors to Achieve Project Success

(2274 Views) (0 Comments)

How to Effectively Engage Requirement Contributors to Achieve Project Success

Your new system just went live and the project, that replaced a critical legacy system, is coming to a close. Business analysts gathered requirements and worked closely with users and developers, but did you capture all of the requirements?

» Iterative Analysis and the Diminishing Business Strategy

(1321 Views) (1 Comments)

Iterative Analysis and the Diminishing Business Strategy

Many IT managers have chosen to execute long-term projects in an iterative approach rather than a single linear fashion. This approach is not necessarily agile as the methodology is still “waterfall”-based but rather a series of waterfall executions (or terraced). This approach introduces new challenges for business analysts.

» FEATURED: Agile vs. Traditional... - Part II: Methods are a means to the end of project success, not the end themselves

(2913 Views) (2 Comments)

Agile vs. Traditional... - Part II: Methods are a means to the end of project success, not the end themselves

By taking a closer look at how your company is developing software, and what is working for projects with different profiles, it’s possible to leverage winning strategies and hybrid approaches to make your software initiatives equally or more successful in the future.

» FEATURED: Business Rules: Basic Principles and Pattern Questions for Business Analysts

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Business Rules: Basic Principles and Pattern Questions for Business Analysts

Before harvesting business rules, you should be aware of some basic principles and absorb them into your practices. First, all business rules are subject to change, including (and perhaps especially) business rules derived directly from business policies. The ability to change and redeploy business rules is essential to business agility.

» FEATURED: A Proposal for an Agile Development Testing V-Model

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A Proposal for an Agile Development Testing V-Model

This article proposes a V-Model for agile development testing and invites feedback from the reader. The agile method used in this article is Scrum; the author assumes the reader is familiar with this solution development life cycle.

» FEATURED: Introducing RuleGuide™ - Business Decision and Rule Management

(1470 Views) (0 Comments)

Introducing RuleGuide™ - Business Decision and Rule Management

RuleGuide is a tool that accelerates and improves the quality of business decision and rule capture, analysis and management. By providing an enterprise repository for business decisions, rules, and associated metadata, RuleGuide fosters ongoing collaboration and alignment ofthe business and IT teams.

» FEATURED: Classifying Decision Model Structures

(1517 Views) (0 Comments)

In this article we focus, not so much on the similarities among decision models, but on their differences. More than that, we explore the idea of classifying decision model structures based on differences in their logic. The decision model diagram is the first place to look for visible differences among decision models.

» FEATURED: Systems Thinking: Understanding the Whole and Not Just the Parts

(2472 Views) (4 Comments)

Systems Thinking: Understanding the Whole and Not Just the Parts

I was very intrigued with this concept when I read it in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK). This concept is so powerful and if used more in organizations can produce remarkable events; however, I have found that Systems Thinking can only be utilized to its fullest potential if the culture of the organization allows for that. However, ...

» FEATURED: Data Flow Diagram with Examples & Tips

(5592 Views) (4 Comments)

The Data Flow Diagram (DFD) provides a graphical representation of the flow of data through a system. It shows logically what information is exchanged by our system processes and external interfaces or data stores, but it does not explicitly show when or in what sequence the information is exchanged.

» FEATURED: Business Analysis with Business Rules

(3245 Views) (5 Comments)

Continuous change is a central fact of life for business these days. The techniques you use for business analysis must be based on the assumption that business rules will change, often quite rapidly. The best business solution is one that caters to such change, always doing so in the manner friendliest to business people and Business Analysts.

» FEATURED: Agile vs. Traditional Software Development: Why is the debate still going on? - Part I: The dangers of bounded rationality

(3994 Views) (16 Comments)

Agile vs. Traditional Software Development: Why is the debate still going on? - Part I: The dangers of bounded rationality

My understanding is that, in practice, successful agilists tend to bring together a number of activities, tasks, and deliverables that are from beyond the boundaries of what may be called “pure agile.” This mixing and matching of software process elements from agile and non-agile (more formal) approaches is a much more practical way of using these ...

» FEATURED: Putting Systems Analysis “Into Context” using the Context Diagram

(4124 Views) (1 Comments)

This article is all about putting your systems analysis into context; literally and metaphorically. It’s all about drawing and interpreting the not-quite-UML Context Diagram that is sometimes referred to as the System Context Diagram.

» History Repeats Itself, But It Doesn’t Have To!

(1560 Views) (0 Comments)

History Repeats Itself, But It Doesn’t Have To!

Why does it take an 'act of congress' for some organizations to realize that what they are doing is not working? I have been in many industries(media, manufacturing, financial and the judicial system) and no matter what industry I've been in I’ve seen some of the same themes.

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Business Analyst Articles: Business Analysis & Systems Analysis

Join the Premier Community for Business Analysts, Business Process Professionals, Systems Analysts, Data Analysts, and more…

Business Analyst Articles: Business Analysis & Systems Analysis

Join the Premier Community for
Business Analysts, Business Process Professionals,
Systems Analysts, Data Analysts, and more…